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Rye PBA president not guilty of manhandling critic

Greg Shillinglaw, gshillingl@lohud.com 12:08 p.m. EDT April 10, 2014

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Rye PBA President Franco Compagnone was found not guilty of second-degree harassment, a violation, during a bench trial at Eastchester Town Hall on April 9, 2014.(Photo: Greg Shillinglaw / The Journal News)Buy Photo

EASTCHESTER – A town judge cleared the president of the Rye police union of a charge stemming from a fight with a longtime adversary, but offered some parting advice for Officer Franco Compagnone as the trial wrapped up Wednesday.

"As a police officer, you walk away. Your skin has to be a lot thicker than that," Justice Domenick J. Porco said after hearing roughly two hours of testimony about the Oct. 20 scuffle between Compagnone and Jim Amico at an Eastchester car show.

The frosty relationship between the two men dates back roughly a decade, around the time Compagnone says he responded to a domestic incident involving Amico.

Since that meeting, the Rye resident has filed multiple complaints against the veteran cop, blasted him in cyberspace and threatened to "bury" him. Amico says Compagnone also has retaliated against him, refusing to let officers work overtime for crowd control during a fundraiser for a scholarship fund in memory of Amico's son, who was killed crossing a street in 2006.

Compagnone's attorney said this case was an example of Amico's "irrational grudge," a vendetta that has escalated since Compagnone had Amico's truck towed in 2012.

The Westchester County District Attorney's Office, however, argued Compagnone was the initial aggressor in the fight between the two men, which unfolded near a hot dog truck outside the Moonlight Cruisers Classic Car Show at Lake Isle.

Compagnone was charged with second-degree harassment, a violation, and suspended with pay after the incident. He already had been out with a knee injury, his attorney said.

Both men took the stand Wednesday during the bench trial and gave vastly different accounts of who instigated the confrontation. Amico said he was standing on line for food when Compagnone started yelling obscenities at him. The off-duty officer eventually chest-bumped Amico, pushed him into a fence and tried to gouge his eyes out while also swinging at him, Amico testified.

Compagnone claimed Amico initiated the shouting match that led to them grabbing each other. Compagnone said he never tried to strike Amico but did push him. "My intent was to keep him away from me," the officer said.

Porco eventually found Compagnone not guilty after expressing concern about conflicting testimony given by a prosecution witness and Amico.

"We were always very confident that, particularly in front of a veteran and highly competent judge who's very capable of assessing witness credibility ... we always thought Franco would be acquitted," said Compagnone's lawyer, Andrew Quinn, outside Eastchester Town Hall.

Compagnone has been praised as a "good cop" by colleagues, but he's also found himself involved in controversial cases, one of which is ongoing. He is a defendant in a federal lawsuit brought by former Rye resident Andrew Caspi, who claims he was roughed up by officers during a 2004 arrest when he was 17.

The Journal News also reported this summer that Compagnone had agreed in 2011 to the reduction of a felony assault charge against a man he had arrested only after the defendant made a $75,000 payment to the officer. Compagnone, who was injured making the arrest and missed nearly 10 months of work, said the payment was to head off a lawsuit he was going to file.